


Locust Tree

by blodynbach



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: High Chaos, M/M, Mute!Corvo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:39:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blodynbach/pseuds/blodynbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am not dear to you,” Corvo says through gritted teeth. His lips part, voice all rocky from misuse. There’s no seduction; only seething anger. “Kiss me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locust Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to montastic on tumblr for beta-reading for me!
> 
> Also, this features the inclusion of the bit of plot which was cut from the final game, where Daud cuts off Corvo's hand at the start of the Flooded District, and Corvo had to get it back before fighting with Daud.

I.

It is quiet in the Flooded District, after the Whalers have all taken a leave of absence. Corvo knows quiet well, knows it better than anyone else considering sound is all he ever gets. If he’d had a tongue, he’d talk to himself; the way Daud had done when smoking at his desk and saying things directed at the gloom. There had been so many curses, fuck fuck fuck, cursing over nothing at all, nothing but fault. His fault. If anyone should curse, it should be Corvo, but then, he can’t.

 He has his quiet and his God.

 Nails broken in their beds scrape against the white circle of bone, that which is laid up high and robed in royalty. Purple drapes, he found them hung up in this room which had once belonged to an old man named Claude. Claude the Clerk. He had read his diaries. Claude the Clerk had been _fucking_ Susan the Serving Girl, Claude the Clerk had wanted to be Claude the King. Claude the Clerk had gotten red in his eyes and bolts in his neck, and he was luckiest corpse in this room because he was the one that was asleep.

 Corvo is wide awake, speed-dialling his God. His hand with its scars all at the wrist, melded with needle and thread and magic filthiness, it cradles the charm as his fingers drum against the markings. Hello. _Hello_. At the lack of response, tenderness is cast aside and the whites jut out as his hands harden. The bone creaks. The bone bends.

 “Hello Corvo.”

 Corvo’s head whips around; the world is pale and blue and cold. The Outsider watches him, leaning against oblivion with his arms folded around himself. His eyes glisten like tar when Corvo crosses the space to meet him. The Outsider has the hands of harvest spiders; his fingers extend and take the mask from the man. The metal turns to bone when it meets the grasp of God: suddenly Corvo is looking at a white skull. The Outsider grips it hard and when the bone squeaks it is as though Corvo’s head has been put in a vice.

 “Unpleasant, isn’t it?” A smirk made of broken teeth; all sharp and mismatched like flint along the shore. Corvo’s expression is juxtaposition; wincing carelessness. Pain is old. “I must say Corvo, you’re becoming quite the savage. This attire –” he pulls at the dark collar of Corvo’s greatcoat, fingers crawling. “You ought to have taken the red jacket I made a gift of to Daud.” With a tug, the black of the clothing melts away to crimson, and – “There. Suits you better, don’t you think?”

Corvo nods jerkily; the Outsider sighs.

“Oh, brighten up. Little Emily isn’t _dead,_ you know _._ She’s in the _tower_ ,” his hands flourish, his back is turned and form is laden with sarcasm. “Waiting for her prince of _rats_ to come rescue her, and I expect you’ll do just that. Daud was penultimate, Emily saved from being dangled over the edge is _it_. Why are you _moping_?”

 There is a sensation of unplugging in Corvo’s throat; he gasps as the passage of air is restricted then unrestricted and is relieved to see the Outsider has taken the rare step of gifting him back his _tongue_ for a time. He licks his lips first; finding the taste of them salty and rough.

 “Kiss me.”

 The God laughs; out of plain shock, out of confusion. It’s not the type of thing people make a habit of saying towards him, let alone demanding. “Corvo, my dear –”

 “I am not _dear_ to you,” Corvo says through gritted teeth. His lips part, voice all rocky from misuse. There’s no seduction; only seething anger. “ _Kiss me_.”

 

II.

 The Outsider steps back as Corvo steps forward, as the man’s fists clench and his bones roll and his blood pops inside each vein. The eyes like silt, all grit and stone, a kiss would curdle them red.

 The patchwork hand made of sewing kit and supernatural shtick snaps out and grabs the back of the Outsider’s neck, fingers clinging to the black baby hairs like minnows tangling in nets. Being so close to a man, the Outsider sees Corvo’s skin is layered with damp dirt from the gutters through which he crawled, then there are pits and divets from pores because apparently flesh _breathes_ , and then under all that there are the scars. Little ones, like the cut on the lips where he’d bitten on a fish bone and it had splintered. Big ones, like the ones all over his nail beds from Coldridge where they’d crushed each fingernail like seashells under boot.

 Corvo breathes, and the Outsider _feels_ it.

 “As you sow, so shall you reap,” the Outsider tells the man what he already knows, “Kiss me and I’ll kill you, Corvo.”

 “Reaping,” Corvo repeats, “You’d know all about that then, wouldn’t you?”

 “Would I?” the Outsider replies levelly, manoeuvring his hand to check Corvo’s heartbeat. He wants to feel it accelerate with thrill, but it’s as steady as a metronome. How oddly disappointing.

 “Yes,” the Outsider wonders what Corvo will look like when he weeps, “Seeing as you’ve been nothing but death.”

 Then Corvo’s dry cracked lips are against his, then he’s learning what human mouths taste like anew, kissing Corvo is like kissing salt and sorrow and loss and it shouldn’t be that good but it _is._ He’s kissed men and women and people all before, but Corvo doesn’t quite qualify as _anything_ by this point. He even has the audacity to make the sounds the Outsider normally makes: those little hungry noises as he greedily demands _more_ from the other, more of what he is giving him, more of all this, _please_. More plague, more death, more rats.

 

 III.

 When Corvo leaves in sickness, the Outsider decides he will appear in Emily Kaldwin’s sleep tonight. He will say sorry about Corvo, and she will think she is dreaming until she gets hauled up off that lighthouse tower and the skull of metal slips from the skull of skin and she sees the teardrops pouring down on Corvo’s cheeks are red as roses.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Locust Tree](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7282690) by [Kess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/pseuds/Kess)




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